Festival of Deaths(25)

Gregor picked up the crumpled paper again, stared at the name printed on it in such precise letters, and put it down again. “How long ago did all of this happen?” he asked Tibor.

“A little over two weeks.”

“Two weeks. Do you know if the police got any physical evidence at the scene? Anything to link the act to any specific person?”

“I told you—”

“I know they don’t know the names,” Gregor insisted, “but they might have blind evidence that could eventually be definitive. Hair. Fingerprints. Even singed or torn skin.”

“Ah,” Tibor said, impressed. “I don’t know.”

Gregor tapped his fingers against his knee. “Well,” he said, “I suppose we can ask. It’s always possible they’re sounding more pessimistic than they have to. In cases like this, though, the police tend to want to deliver hope if they possibly can. You do realize, if the police don’t have anything of the kind I’m talking about, even if we do find out who was responsible, the police aren’t going to be able to arrest them?”

“Not enough evidence?” Tibor asked dejectedly.

“Not enough evidence and too far from the commission of the crime. If this had come up within, oh, twenty-four hours or so—if you’d talked to me and I’d talked to the Bureau and the Bureau had come up with a couple of names that fit, all in the first twenty-four hours, then there might have been a chance to dig up a witness or find some new evidence, but now—”

“You make it sound so hopeless,” Tibor said.

“It is hopeless,” Gregor told him.

“Does that mean you will not ask your friend at the FBI for us?”

“Of course I’ll ask my friend at the FBI. But you and your friend Rabbi Goldman have got to understand that what I’ll be delivering, if I deliver anything, is a chance to catch these idiots the next time they do anything.”

“The next time,” Tibor said, shocked.

“This still doesn’t explain to me why Cavanaugh Street is celebrating Hanukkah,” Gregor said. “Donna came downstairs this morning and planted a neon menorah in my living room window.”

“The menorah,” Tibor said, leaping to his feet. “I forgot. Donna brought me one this morning and I have not yet put it up.”

“Tibor—”

“I will only be a minute, Krekor. It is important. It is a gesture of solidarity.”

“Right,” Gregor said, but he supposed he understood. Tibor was always whipping the residents of Cavanaugh Street into a frenzy of solidarity for somebody or the other: starving children in Ethiopia; oppressed students in China; the homeless who filled the shelter run by a consortium of volunteers from Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church, Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, and the Becker Street African Methodist Church. Tibor was a devotee of good causes. Gregor could hardly fault him for that. As for this latest enthusiasm—why shouldn’t Tibor show his solidarity with the Jewish community of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Main Line? Why shouldn’t he? The only thing that worried Gregor Demarkian was what form this solidarity would take. The neon menorahs were interesting enough, but Gregor knew Cavanaugh Street. It would never in a million years end there.

Tibor came back from the front hall and tripped over a few books again, the hem of his cassock flapping, the sparse hair on his head bouncing as he flailed.

“There it is. All done. Now I have only to work on my voice. You will be home next Saturday, Krekor?”

“Far as I know.”

“Good. You will come to our block party. I want everybody in this neighborhood at our block party. Lida Arkmanian is even now learning to cook kosher food.”

“What?” Gregor said.

Tibor wasn’t listening. He had finished his coffee and wanted to get more. He had come to that point in the conversation where he did not want to discuss anything more with Gregor Demarkian. That was why Gregor was suspicious. Gregor got suspicious when anybody on Cavanaugh Street told him that something they were about to make him do would be—well, not a complicated mess.

Block party.

Kosher food.

Right.

On any other day of the year, Gregor would have stopped and insisted on being told exactly what was going on. On this day, he was in danger of being late for a very important lunch. He got out of his chair and made his way back across the obstacle course of books, wondering when Tibor got the time to read like this when he spent so much time making Gregor Demarkian’s life resemble one of the wilder plays of Ionesco. Gregor stopped at the door to the entry and called out,